A hot-button interactive exhibit dismantles the ethnic myths that keep us apart

Some ideas are so irrefutable, you never doubt them. And if you do, you certainly don't question them out loud.

The earth rotates around the sun. Duh.

Sylvester Stallone's "Rambo" was destined to wow the critics. Not!

Race explains skin-color variation. Really?

Well ... no. Geography, as in how near or far your ancestors lived to tropical climates, explains skin tones. Race is, in fact, a sociological concept developed by humanity about 250 years ago, according to a new exhibit at the Liberty Science Center.

"Race: Are We So Different?," up through April 27 at the Jersey City museum, digs into the science and non-science of the touchy topic. The museum unpacks the subject from historical, scientific and cultural perspectives with games, videos and artifacts.

"It's a subject in which humanity ought to have a better grasp of what's true and what's not true," says Emlyn Koster, president and CEO of the Liberty Science Center. "We are all influenceable and influence others."

Hands-on Interactive: An interactive game about the traits people share yields surprising results that challenge visitors to reconsider the ways in which they categorize people.

Developed by the American Association of Anthropologists with the Science Museum of Minnesota, the exhibit is appropriate for the junior high school crowd and older. The Liberty Science Center, its third stop on a four-year tour, marks its NYC area debut.

People are like avocados, declares the exhibit, displaying an actual avocado. Their classification changes depending on where they are. Here, avocados are known as vegetables, but in Brazil, avocados are identified as fruits.

Similarly, in Brazil a person would never simply be labeled black or white. A person might be called amorendada (tannish) or morena-fechada (very dark) or cor-de-rosa (pink). Due to an entirely different history, Brazilians describe themselves and others by a more complex set of classifications.

"Who is White?" a computer quiz, challenges museum-goers to answer that question. Press the start button and the name of an ethnic group appears. Israelis? Albanians? Poles? Kenyans? Italians? Canadians? Are they white? Yes? No? Not sure? There are no right or wrong answers. At the end of the quiz, a bar chart depicts how other quiz-takers answered.

"White is a squishy category," reads the end notes. "Before you could easily say who is white and who is not. The question of who is white and not white has changed over time."

In "Discrimination Calling: Warning the Sound of Your Voice May Result in Unfair Treatment," you press a button and hear the voice of one of six ethnically diverse persons pictured on a screen. When you think you can identify the person based on the voice, you ring in. The results aren't necessarily what you might expect. A man of East Asian descent sounds British. A light-skinned blonde woman turns out to be Jamaican.

Student Voices: In a student developed display, youth perspectives on race, identity and ethnicity are expressed through their own words, pictures, and objects.

Other areas delve into the history of race, explaining how laws favoring whites over others helped create social and economic inequalities that persist today. A metal placard from Selma, Ala., dated 1931 reads "PUBLIC SWIMMING POOL" with the words "whites only" printed smaller below.

"White: the Color of Money" addresses economic disparities between the races. Beside cardboard stacks of money, appears a story about two men who took advantage of the GI Bill during the Korean War.

In 1951, a white veteran named Herb Kalisman paid $9,000 for a house in Levittown, L.I., a neighborhood known for good schools. Today, the house is valued at $420,000. In 1950, a black vet named Eugene Burnett was kept from buying a Levittown house because the developers "have not as yet decided to sell those homes to Negroes." Instead, Burnett bought a house in Amityville, L.I., for $7,000 and sold it in 1960 for just $10,000 to move to an area with better schools.

But perhaps the most compelling stories come from the first-person video accounts.

Evelynn Hammonds, a historian of science at Harvard University, explains how troubling it was for her as a black little girl in Atlanta to use a Crayola crayon called "flesh." "I grew up reading Ebony magazine, seeing advertisements for skin lighteners," she says. There was always "pressure to be whiter" she recalls.

Contact AWE senior writer Jodi Lee Reifer at reifer@siadvance.com.

"Race: Are We So Different?"

Where
Liberty Science Center
Liberty State Park, Jersey City

When
Through April 27
Tuesday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday and Sunday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Admission
$15.75 for adults
$11.50 for children, ages 2 to 12, and seniors, 62 years and older

Keep checking the Web site for details about a YouTube.com project seeking personal reflections on race, plus "Talking Circles." In the Native American tradition, groups will sit in moderated circles to dissect the idea of race.